


The Third Role

by Lavanya_Six



Category: Worm (Web Serial Novel)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-29
Updated: 2014-08-29
Packaged: 2018-02-15 06:30:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2219322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lavanya_Six/pseuds/Lavanya_Six
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Taylor Hebert has powers. Or is it powers that have Taylor Hebert?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Third Role

**April 14th, 2011.**

The lunch hour was ending when I heard the bank's silent alarm.

It surprised me how easy it was to ditch school this time. Friday had been a necessity, thanks to being soaked in fruit soda. Monday had been a defeat, because of the memories Emma unearthed. The last two had been a struggle, but I'd made it through both school days.

Now?

I was _grinning_ at the prospect of skipping class to fight crime.

Even just hovering high over the Brockton Bay Central Bank, the sight of all those heroes and villains duking it out thrilled me. I didn't even mind the cold April rain pelting me. On an intellectual level, the interplay between radically different powers was mesmerizing, the people using those powers even more so. The bad guys played to one another's strengths, isolating and incapacitating the militarily- and numerically-superior Wards. The good guys fought as individuals. The bad guys fought as a team.

Not hard to see who would win, unless I stepped in.

I could snipe the villains from up here with sunlight blasts, but I wasn't sure I could do that and avoid killing them in the process. Not to mention that I might hit a water or gas main, or expose underground electrical cables to all that rainwater and electrocute them. Even with a few months of practice, my fine control over my blasts wasn't as good as I'd like it to be.

After checking my domino mask one last time to see if it fit properly, I clenched my gloved hands into fists and pushed with my power.

The rains that had soaked me sizzled away.

I was careful to dial up the brightness slowly, not wanting to hurt anyone like when I had accidentally blinded Lung the other night. I didn't know if anyone here besides Aegis could heal. I 'felt' my light interact with the cloud of perfect darkness that boxed in the remaining Wards, and searched for...

...something.

Purity and I were a lot alike in terms of power, although I didn't know if she could pull off the sort of trick I was attempting. Not for the first time I wished we could compare notes. Both of us were Legend-style flying artillery who relied on kinetically charged light, and we were largely disguised by the sheer luminous output of our power. Although where Purity glowed, I shined.

I'd also been forced to design my costume around Purity's mixed reputation. I didn't want anyone confusing me for a white supremacist. So where she wore a white bodysuit to emphasize her Aryan perfection, I went for total contrast with a black one. Whenever I powered up, it made my skin and hair -- both of which transformed -- stand out all the more brilliantly.

I was still figuring out the limits of my power, and how it interacted with the powers of others. By sheer accident I'd forced Lung to partially de-transform during our fight. We'd both been shocked. Maybe it wasn't a one-off trick.

By now, the capes down below had finally noticed me.

" _Four at most_ she says," I heard one of the villains mutter.

A tendril of darkness shot out at me. A part of me admired the range and cohesion of that cape's ground-to-air attack, but the rest of me was busy dodging. I wasn't the most graceful flyer, and I was occupied still scanning for the something within me that might counter the darkness.

Out of nowhere, my left leg flailed. I went into a brief tailspin. My concentration on countering the darkness was broken, and I felt what little progress I'd made slip away. Even as I course-corrected my flight path, another spasm hit me, this time in my right forearm.

Telekinetic attack? No. The motion came from within my own muscles.

A Master.

He was overriding my nervous system. Single-burst attacks. Not enough to knock me out of the air unless he got very lucky, but if he used my modest Brute strength against me and had me snap my own neck? I knew I could heal pretty much instantly from burns and shallow cuts, but something like that, if it was possible? No clue. 

Up in the sky, I was in his clear line-of-sight. 

I dove for the street. Time to roll up my sleeves.

* * *

Afterwards, Aegis, not having much of the way of a throat left, left the talking to Gallant. He opened by shaking my hand. "Thank you for your help. The Undersiders had us on the ropes there."

"No problem."

I glanced over at the Undersiders, who knelt in a row along the sidewalk with their hands zip-cuffed behind their backs. They'd more than had the Wards on the ropes. They'd been magnificent. Although it wouldn't be polite to point that out.

I almost wished I could have watched everything play out naturally.

Weird.

"It was a good fight," I added, more to myself than Gallant.

"Would you like to come back to headquarters with us? We're debriefing, but shooting the breeze with each other after a fight is a lot of fun."

I shook my head.

"I'm sorry, I have to go. Somewhere there's a crime happening."

Which was true, even if it was a copout. I could hear a hell of lot of awful things in this city, more and more with each passing day.

Ever since I'd finally gone out over the weekend, it had been harder than ever to shut out the cries of pain. Sleeping I could manage in the quiet lulls, but it was getting harder to justify to myself sitting through class while kids were being orphaned in gang wars and there were people to save from burning buildings.

I lifted off the--

"Hey, wait!"

I looked down, hovering in place.

"Completely forgot," Gallant said, sounding abashed. "You have a name? Gotta have something to give the press when we tell them about you."

I did have a name, in fact, but I couldn't use it.

The one I wanted to use, springing fully formed into my mind when while I was still hospitalized, was a no-go. More than a few Israeli and Southern capes had laid claim to it over the years. Nothing else I tried felt like it rolled off my tongue, however.

So I compromised with a soundalike name.

"Call me Scion."

* * * *

**September 9th, 1994.**

Kevin Norton was dying.

The motorist had sped off, leaving the man laid out in the street minutes before the entity's own arrival. It could look into every possible future, and saw none where Kevin Norton was thankful for the entity restoring him to full health.

So it stood over the man.

"Wonder if I'll wake up as a butterfly," he wheezed. "That'd be nice. Never did much with my life to earn anything better. What about you, golden man? What'll you be reborn as when the same rain falls on your head?"

The entity would not be reborn. The cycle had been disrupted.

"You've saved a lot of people's babies. That's got to count for something." He expelled a measure of saliva and blood on the asphalt. "You've earned yourself another go at being human. Good parents, too. But maybe... switch things up. See how the other half lives."

Its other half was the counterpart. By the binary sexual reproduction common to this species, that would make its other half female.

After Kevin Norton's brain function ceased, the entity considered.

What was its role now?

Kevin Norton said it had earned a new one.

Be a female human being with parents.

As commonly understood by the faiths of Kevin Norton's species, a rebirth required no memory of the previous life. When that new life ended, the entity would be made aware of itself again.

Yes. That would suffice.


End file.
